About Us

Eyes on Trade is a blog by the staff of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (GTW) division. GTW aims to promote democracy by challenging corporate globalization, arguing that the current globalization model is neither a random inevitability nor "free trade." Eyes on Trade is a space for interested parties to share information about globalization and trade issues, and in particular for us to share our watchdogging insights with you! GTW director Lori Wallach's initial post explains it all.

Of the fissures running through the American left, the deepest, and most impenetrable, is probably trade... It's a complicated issue. But you wouldn't know it from Stuart Townsend's new film, Battle in Seattle. ... It is, in Townsend's telling, a seminal moment in political history. It's just not clear why.

The core of the movie is the protesters.
But the core of the protesters proves curiously hollow. ... At no point does any character
explain the problems with the World Trade Organisation, or detail their
vision for a better world or give a reason for their presence that
doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd say to get laid at a protest
rally. If Townsend's point was that protest is a form of superficial
self-definition rather than an actual engagement with the issues at
hand, then, point well made. But I don't think that was his point...

Toward the end of the film, Django and Jay are sitting in jail. Trying
to cheer up his friend, Django leans over. "Look man, a week ago nobody
knew what the WTO was!" Then he considers the statement. "Actually,
they still don't know what it is! But at least they know it's bad."
Having thus articulated the movie's thesis, they both laugh.

Stuart took a big risk in depicting recent history. As an artistic matter, BIS is one of a crop of recent movies set in the 1990s, along with "The Wackness" and "Recount," about the 2000 election. The Seattle protests were the culmination of a decade of Clintonism, where the left was paid short shrift when it wasn't thrown directly under the bus. Meanwhile, corporations like Citigroup and Wal-Mart ruled D.C. (still do), pushing the creation of new commercial institutions and instruments that required a law degree to understand.

Middle-class left activists groomed in the late 1990s drew more inspiration from tree-sitters and direct action than the debating salons of the Ivy League, or their modern-day equivalent: political blogs run largely by Ivy Leaguers. Watch Recount and Battle in Seattle right next to each other: you'll see, on the one side, a Democratic Party that had forgotten how to fight (personified by Warren Christopher) and, on the other side, the cry of the excluded. My reaction to the depiction of Christopher is probably akin to the many centrist movie reviewers when they saw BIS: retching at the all-too familiar stench of players on the other side of a political divide.

Which brings me back to Ezra's review. In no particular order:

What is "The American Left"? I hate this question. If I answer
it honestly, almost everyone in Washington is excluded. On the other
hand, shouldn't I be psyched that people aren't turned off by the
label? While I don't like to exclude peeps that want to join my club, I
will say that I don't know of any person that identifies as a leftist
who would also be identified by the actual left as a leftist who is not
against NAFTA and the WTO. Sure, there are some left folks that have a
critique at the margin about full-throated, fair-trade strategy. Defenders of status-quo trade policies are, almost be definition, not leftist, since doing so would require abandoning class politics, international solidarity, and the fight against corporate-led deregulation. There may be a fissure on trade, but it is not within the left.

The late 1990s attempt at creating a mass "organization" against the WTO was very difficult. The knowledge gap between the median activist and a Clinton administration official was immense. On the other hand, the leadership
of the global justice movement better understood the long-term legal
and political ramifications of trade pact-sponsored deregulation than
the leadership of the Clinton administration. This presents a
political-organizational question that confronts any outsider movement
for social change: do you wait until everyone is perfectly informed
before you start taking action, or is it legitimate to learn-by-doing?
If we had to wait around until everyone understood the health insurance
industry before fighting for health care reform, we'd be waiting a long
time. The best social movements have always insisted that it's a civic
right to participate and agitate: you don't have to wait for
accreditation from on high. The poll tax era is over.

The exchange between Django and Jay is taken from a folk saying of
the global justice movement. It captures the tension between
mobilization and education that illuminates both the promise and
challenge that face the GJ movement. So, yeah, that's the thesis of the
movie: this is what democracy looks like, and it ain't always gonna win
the Pulitzer. And that's just fine.

Generally speaking, the response of many Americans is to dismiss
protests out of hand, arguing that demonstrators are just blowing off
steam and won't make a difference. But if any case can be held as a
counter-example, Seattle is it.

The 1999 mobilization against the
World Trade Organization has never been free from criticism. As Andre
3000's character in the movie quips, even the label "Battle in Seattle"
makes the protests sound less like a serious political event and more
"like a monster truck rally." While the demonstrations were still
playing out and police were busy arresting some 600 people, New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman issued his now-famous edict stating that
deluded activists were just "looking for their 1960s fix." This type of
disregard has continued with the release of the film. A review in the Seattle Weekly dismissively asked, "Remind me again what those demonstrations against the WTO actually accomplished."

While
cynicism comes cheap, those concerned about global poverty, sweatshop
labor, outsourced jobs and threats to the environment can witness
remarkable changes on the international scene.

Comments

Just a few additional points; I'm sure they won't be my last.

1. Many commentators use labels like "progressive," "liberal" or "Democrat," instead of left. Out of all these phrases, left is the phrase that actually means something. There are fissures within the Democratic Party, and perhaps also among "liberals," over trade. The fissures within the progressive world are small, and revolve around how much emphasis to put on trade issues.

2. Just because your average activist didn't know as much as a Clinton administration trade lawyer, I am not suggesting they did not know anything. In fact, often I am amazed at the casual familiarity with subjects like the TRIPS agreement and the sea-turtle case among regular ol' activists, which is are captured in the film. In fact, I think your average GJ activist probably knows more than is efficient from a division-of-labor-within-the-movement perspective. A lot of that has to do with the complexity of the issues at hand, no doubt.